Cute girls doing cheerleading! Cute girls eating! Yeah!
What else can I say other than that? Tatejima officially joins the Cheer Association and the girls decide to give her a welcoming party. First off they address names because as we all know, names are a huge thing in Japan. They think calling each other by their first names is a good idea, but because they know that Kotetsu doesn’t like her name, and her last name is too long, Kohane comes up with a nickname but that doesn’t fly for long and they just stick with Kotetsu. That’s when Arima comes in and they do their little cheer for Kotetsu. And I’ve never mentioned this, but why are all the songs they cheer to in English? I always find it pretty random, but maybe it’s because Arima mentioned that cheerleading is from the States and I guess to honor (?) it they cheer to songs in English? Either way, Kotetsu is touched and runs down to the music room to play a song on the piano for them and runs back up. Silly girl, she could have just invited them to the room. Coming back up exhausted, this transitions to their workout and cheer practice.
I guess this part was pretty interesting. I just knew that cheerleaders wave their arms around with their pom-poms, but I never really thought what certain motions were called. Some were pretty obvious like the T, high V, low V. It’s always nice hearing Arima go into cheer mode and explain the little things about it. The anime hasn’t been totally informative yet but we’ve gotten little tidbits here and there. I would have liked if maybe the whole episode was about nothing but cheer practice since I imagine that Kotetsu would need to catch up to speed. It was really sweet watching her. At first it was pretty tough and she felt a little left behind since the others were better (except Kohane in some aspects) but in the end she had so much fun that she practiced some arm movements at home. They’ve even become reflex now.
The next day, they reveal Kotetsu’s finished uniform. There’s some cute teasing and then Arima comes in to tell them that they have a request from the home ec club. Thinking it was cheer-related, Kohane drags Kotetsu while she’s still in her cheer uniform. But it turns out it was cheer-related at all, and they home ec girls just wanted the Cheer Association to try out their menu for a contest.
So they eat, and this part of the episode just made me hungry while also making me pissed off that my high school didn’t have home ec. Seeing home ec in shows and movies, I was always excited in taking home ec in high school but we didn’t have one. Honestly, I think home ec isn’t such a widespread thing in American schools. That’s a shame. Anyway, they eat lots of food and it’s so damn good that Kohane and Kotetsu do high V’s and claps because of course. In the end, they find out that the real reason why they’re eating all this food is because of Basketball-senpai. She wanted to thank them for their cheers at their game but Basketball-senpai is the cool but shy type of person to thank someone so she asked the home ec club to treat them to some food as thanks. So as thanks for the food as thanks for their cheers, Kohane and the girls cheer for the basketball team as…thanks. It’s probably going to end up as an endless cycle of cheer and thanks.
As usual, it was a cute episode. We got more of Kotetsu and she’s growing on me. She’s just this sweet girl and watching her enjoy cheer is warming. I also love how blunt she can be, it really differs from her meek personality. Her blunt responses make me laugh.
Next week it looks like we’ll get more cheer exercises, and it looks like they’ll start doing stunts on the roof so I think that’ll be fun to watch. I’m interested in seeing how Kohane is going to face her fear of heights.
